America Gets Battered . . . and deep fried

in praise of the county fair

I expected carnies. This is my idea of the county fair—carnival showmen, slightly punkish, Barnum and Bailey’s with a touch of Ripley’s Believe It or Not!—and we got a six-foot, bean pole of a man blowing up balloons for the dart throw, the bucktoothed bald man shagging ping-pong balls at the win-a-goldfish game, and some incredible handlebar mustaches. Yet, oddly enough, the ride jockeys operating the Ferris wheel and Tilt-a-Whirl were clean-cut Mexicans in company polo shirts . . . corporate carnies, who would have thought?

Thankfully, the crowds more than made up for any deficit in interesting people. Young and old, urban and rural, white, black, brown, carnies, cowboys, hippies: a real cultural convention, a true taste of America.

Of course, the carnival is only one part of the county fair. Beside the funnel cakes and turkey legs stood an exhibit hall and livestock pens full of prize-winning chickens, rabbits, goats and pigs, and a handful of beaming kids from the 4-H club who raised them. While on the other end of the fairgrounds, posting for juxtaposition, roared the demolition derby.

Demolition derby . . . possibly the most American thing. Imagine its conception! “Hey, buddy, let’s smash these old cars together until the last one’s standing. Yeeewwww!!!” The derby kicked off with a sequined cowgirl slamming a sledge hammer onto a contestant’s hood, before a team of Mad Max vehicles charged into one another, fire, smoke, and engine fluid leaking across the dirt arena. Pure entertainment. You can draw a throughline straight from the gladiators in the Coliseum to this spectacle, the type of thing that has gotten people excited for millennia.

A juxtaposition, indeed. Because for all the over-produced, buffed-and-polished entertainment served up these days, the county fair still hangs onto a certain downhome charm: the DIY attitude, quintessentially American, has kept it an annual staple in towns across this county for over a century. It’s a feeling more than anything. The derby, the livestock show, and every carnival game has it, this allure of the chance for recognition, unconventional as it may be. And I must ask: is that so different from the American dream?

“You’d be the youngest in history,” the carnie told my eight-year-old son who insisted on trying the milk bottle toss. He lost his $10 in thirty-seconds. Sullen, he seemed to understand as I explained the grift—that they make it look easy, though it’s damn near impossible—so when we reached the basketball toss at the next booth, he naturally begged me to try that one, too. But I was out of cash.

You could tell which stuffed animal prizes had been hanging around longest from the dust coating their fur. The carnies had a habit of slapping them clean on a knee before rewarding the lucky winners, which had people lining up to try their hand. Appropriately enough, the grandest prize of all was a giant stuffed corndog—though it would have taken a Powerball-worthy string of luck to take that home.

As the night settled in and the lot dust caught the rainbow lights of the rides overhead, I watched all these different people enjoying the midsummer evening and couldn’t help thinking how wholesome it felt. Such a contrast to the big circus peddled to us these days, on the news and damn near everywhere else.

Too much. It’s all a bit too much. Ah, but maybe the county fair provides a chance for relief from such woes.

There’s an upstart print newspaper out there, conceived during the isolation of the pandemic, called County Highway. I’ll put it out there, say it features the most interesting American writing happening today. As they put it, the county is “a chunk of earth big enough to allow for a variety of human types, but small enough to get to know a decent number of your neighbors, where they come from, what they’re proud of, what they fear, what they smoke, what they drink, and what they love. Counties are the right-sized places for telling stories.”

Based on what I saw walking around the county fair, that feels right.

Here’s a hot take: I don’t think we’re supposed to be so connected. Endless notifications, barrages of emails and texts, every product new and used at our fingertips, even the self-evident convenience of FaceTiming halfway around the world—these things, situated within the context of globalization, have been sold to us as some kind of utopia, but what if they are actually making everything worse?

The writer Michael Haupt argues societies based on a smaller scale is where we are headed in our social evolution, that globalization has peaked and we are contracting to something more manageable.

“It’s the municipality. Cities aren’t just smaller versions of countries. They’re fundamentally different coordination systems. They’re big enough to matter but small enough to change (with a little conscious, concerted effort and a roadmap). They map to natural boundaries. They operate at human scale.”

Maybe that looks like people focusing on what’s in front of them—not on a screen—communities becoming more self-sufficient, relying more on local goods and services, local agriculture, supporting small business. If not entirely sustainable, it seems like a good start.

For one example: the last few years I’ve bought into a farm share and, for the length of the growing season, pick up a weekly box of vegetables from this young farming couple a few miles from my house. Who knows if that makes a tangible difference in the world, but there’s something special about knowing the people who grow your food.

So, perhaps the future looks much like the past: reveling in simple pleasures. Maybe as a culture we’re approaching the simplicity on the other side of complexity. I’ll only say that when I see a few thousand people of all different stripes enjoying a summer night at the county fair, well, I can’t help thinking we might be doing alright.

Of course, much progress remains to be done. Always. But let’s celebrate the wins, too.

With that in mind, allow me to quote one of the most fervently patriotic Americans that ever lived, the conservationist Edward Abbey, who once said: “It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.”

Agreed. And maybe—just maybe—you can do both at once at the county fair.

Peace ✌️

Martin

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On another note, I’ve been compiling the last two-and-a-half years of essays into a book . . . an actual real life book. Reading on the internet is fine, but I believe holding a book in your hands is even better. The plan is to release it around Halloween, Oct. 31.

If you’re a paid subscriber, I’ll send you a signed copy in the mail. Take that as incentive to go paid, if you like. Or you can just buy it like a normal person—although being normal is kinda weird.